The Persians and Babylonians seem to have preferred subjects for their embroidered dresses somewhat in the style of the mantle of Alkisthenes, which was probably Oriental, and suggests the Babylonian mantle in Jericho, “which tempted Achan to sin.” The Egyptian frescoes on the other hand, sometimes give us women and goddesses dressed in small flowery patterns that remind one of Indian chintzes. These were probably woven, painted, and embroidered, and filled in with threads of gold. The Romans varied their fashions, but they preferred for a time striped borders on their garments,[475] and called them “molores,” “dilores,” “trilores,” up to seven. The Greeks but seldom departed from the rule of plain or quietly patterned surfaces with rich borders in their delineations of dress, though there are examples of large designs covering the whole garment.
The embroidered dresses of early Christian times are to be judged of by mosaics and frescoes—mostly Italian. Those of the dark ages were till lately only names and guesses. But a hiatus in our knowledge has been filled up lately by the store of entombed textiles discovered in the Fayoum in Egypt, and now at Vienna, in Herr Graf’schen’s Collection. Here we have a variety of shapes, designs, and stitches, and every kind of subject, sacred and profane, Christian and Pagan, and the missing links between Indian and Byzantine fabrics are revealed. They cover nearly 400 years, from the third to the seventh century, and many of them may be looked upon as apart from any ecclesiastical or even Christian suggestions. I have spoken of them in the chapter on [Woollen Materials].[476]
After the seventh century, we again come into the dawning light of history—and find here and there an illustrative fragment, nearly always ecclesiastical, taken from the graves of priests and monarchs. Charlemagne’s mantle and robe embroidered with elephants and with bees, preserved at Aix-la-Chapelle—his dalmatic in the Vatican—the Durham embroideries, are rare and precious examples of that early period.
Semper describes the difference between “the covering” and the “binding.” This seems to be little considered in modern costume, but it is so essential that I would impress it on my readers. He says that “the covering seeks to isolate, to enclose, to shelter, to spread around, over a certain space, and is a collective unit,” whereas binding implies ligature, and represents a “united plurality,”—for example, a bundle of sticks, the fasces of the lictors, &c. “Binding is linear, in dress it is either horizontal or spiral.” What can the united plurality be that justifies the binding often bestowed on the figure in fashionable costumes? more fitted for binding together the bones of the dead, than for permitting the agility of the muscles of the living. Semper continues,—“Anything that goes against this important axiom is wrong.”[477]
I think we must all agree that the objects of dress are decency, isolation, warmth, grace, and beauty. As long as fashion takes the place of taste, and extravagant chic supersedes grace and beauty, we must not hope that fine designs to individualize dress will be called for. The French machine-made embroideries are so beautiful, and comparatively cheap, that we cannot compete with them. The best artists design them, and the only fault to be found is this, that as they are made by thousands of yards, and can only be varied by interchange of colours, they become common the day they are produced. It has been said that “fashion is made for a class, but taste for mankind.”[478] Fashion is the enemy of taste, though she makes use of her services. The gown, of which the fashion is in every sense imported from France, will probably never again be the vehicle for home embroideries. But there are other articles of personal adornment which will always be available for the fancies of decorative taste—the fan, the purse or satchel, the apron, the fichu, the point of the shoe, and the muff—all these are objects on which thought and ingenuity may well be expended, and which will remain as records of personal feeling when the workers and givers of such graceful mementoes are far away. Carriage-rugs and foot-muffs, and embroidered letter-cases, and book-covers, must be placed somewhere between furniture and personal ornament. In all these the “imprévu,” or “unexpected,” is what is valuable, including all that is original and quaint.
Embroidery will, however, probably continue occasionally to be employed in the adornment of dress—and will leave of each phase and period of art some fine examples on which the archæologist of the future may pause and reason.
There are in most old houses some specimens of old secular work—few earlier than the date of Henry VIII. Gothic dress is very rare, except the ecclesiastical. But from the fifteenth century till now, there remains enough to exercise our curiosity, our artistic tastes, and our power of selection and comparison; and hints for beauty and grace may often be found and adapted to the style of our own day.
Planché’s “Dictionary of Dress,” and Ferrario’s “Costumi antichi e moderni di tutti i Popoli,” are great works on dress and costume, and both are splendidly illustrated and worthy of study.
FOOTNOTES:
[472] Elsewhere I have spoken of dress being continually offered to the images of the pagan gods in the temples. Herodotus (ii. p. 159) tells us that Pharaoh Necho offered to the Apollo of Branchidæ the dress he happened to have worn at both his great successes (the victory of Magdalus and the taking of Cadytis). In the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus the colossal statue of Bacchus and his nurse Nysa were draped, the former in a shawl, the latter in a tunic variegated with gold. See Yates, “Textrinum Antiquorum,” p. 369. Old clothes were sent as votive offerings to temples, and inscriptions recording lists of such decorations are still extant. See [Appendix 1]. The Greeks honoured the menders and darners, and called them “healers of clothes.” Blümner, p. 202.